For the POMPEII!! Lobby Display, it was important to me that, despite the nearly 2000 years of history we had to cover, the display still felt fun, inviting, and in the spirit of vaudeville. After discussing some ideas with director Cameron Cobb, and the writing team's dramaturg Vicki Cheatwood, we landed on the idea of bringing Ripley's Believe It or Not! silly facts into the lobby of TRAC.

We pulled facts from Vaudeville history and Pompeii history, and put our own POMPEII!! stylistic spin on them, incorporating the tone of the show itself. We also wanted to keep our lobby as interactive as possible, so we created a photo challenge area, and a maze for audience members for audience members to try to escape.

The photo area featured vaudeville and POMPEII!!-style props for audiences to put on and record themselves telling their best joke in (for those afraid of the funny we had a list of classic vaudeville jokes for them to try their hand at). Our maze asked the player to escape Pompeii before Mt. Vesuvius erupted; the POMPEII!! trick was that no matter which exit they took, it would result in the player's grisly death, with options including a sinkhole, random act of violence, or natural disaster. Oops!

This was definitely one of our liveliest lobbies - scroll through the pictures below to see why. Next up: New Works Festival!